Category Archives: Washington Huskies

The debates rage about the future of Marshawn
Lynch, but there’s no question
about his growing brand. The Seahawks’ running back is
cashing in off the field.

Lynnley Browning of Newsweek writes about how you market an
athlete who doesn’t talk to the media:

The less Lynch speaks to the media, the more his popularity
grows. He doesn’t even want to talk about his company right now.
Mitch Grossbach, president of M3/Relativity, which oversees the
development of BeastModeonline, says Lynch couldn’t speak to
Newsweek for this story because he was “in no mood to talk right
now. He’s emotionally debilitated by [the loss]—he needs a week to
recover.”

In a world of professional athletes happily shilling
everything from Cialis to car insurance, Lynch’s verbal striptease
is a test case for how to grow an emerging rock-star athlete into a
brand worth millions. “He’s maintaining the irony of not talking,
and that has made him more marketable and more endearing with fans
and consumers,” says Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing expert who is
executive creative director at Baker Street Advertising in San
Francisco. “It’s the antithesis of how you would go about becoming
a marketable star, and it’s working.”

The NFL is still trying to figure out what position best fits
Thompson, who wasn’t a good fit for baseball. He went 0-
for-39 with 37 strikeouts during his pro baseball career:

King writes:

… In his freshman year at Washington, coaches created a
hybrid safety/linebacker position just to get him on the field.
Over the next three years, he played five other positions. His mere
presence was a weapon. “We put him at personal protector, not only
because he’d be good at it,” says Huskies coach Chris Petersen,
“but also, teams would be so worried about us snapping the ball to
Shaq that they backed off on trying to block our punts.”

That’s the paradox of Shaq Thompson: Nobody knows exactly
what he is. They just know they want him.

The headline says it all: Always A Rebel: Jerry Tarkanian was
college sports’ original honest man

Wolff writes:

Tarkanian spent most of his professional life as a poster
boy for disreputability. Today, with the NCAA itself in broad
disrepute, it’s almost as if he lived just long enough for public
opinion to catch up to him. There would be much worse things than
if, in death, Tarkanian were to earn something like
vindication.

At baseball’s GM meetings last November, the room of
executives teemed with discussions about how to jolt offense in a
game lacking it. Radical ideas were proposed, from putting
rules into place on defensive shifts to the possibility of forcing
relief pitchers to throw to more than one batter. Generating the
most agreement was the problem of the low strike.

********************

Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sportswrites about college football’s most intriguing
head coach. Tony Sanchez guided Bishop Gorman
HS to an 85-5 record in eight seasons.

Wetzel writes:

Sanchez is a rare breed; the college football coach hired
directly from the high school ranks. He’s just the fifth in the
modern era – Jim Bradley to New Mexico State in 1973, Bob Commings
to Iowa in 1974, Gerry Faust to Notre Dame in 1981 and Todd Dodge
to North Texas in 2007.

None lasted very long.

UNLV is arguably the worst program in the country, posting a
pathetic eight two-win seasons across the last 11 years. It’s been
to four bowl games … ever. The glory days are that time they
finished tied for third in their division of the Mountain
West.

The numbers breakdown came after Barkley ripped Houston
Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey for his over-reliance on analytics. Morey
in turn ripped Barkley on Twitter:

Best part of being at a TNT game live is it is easy to avoid
Charles spewing misinformed biased vitriol disguised as
entertainment

Here’s Sir Charles’ words that sparked the debate:

“I’ve always believed analytics was crap. … I never mention
the Rockets as legitimate contenders ’cause they’re not. And,
listen, I wouldn’t know Daryl Morey if he walked into this room
right now.”

“The NBA is about talent,” Barkley added. “All these guys
who run these organizations who talk about analytics, they have one
thing in common — they’re a bunch of guys who have never played the
game, and they never got the girls in high school, and they just
want to get in the game.”

I didn’t pick the Washington Huskies to beat Oregon, but I
thought the Dawgs were ready to give the Ducks a game. Surely,
they’d cover the spread (20.5 points).

Wrong.

I thought the Seattle Seahawks would regroup and handle the Rams
in St. Louis.

Wrong.

They did regroup, but it was too late. The Rams rode some
special teams tricky to a 28-26 victory and the Seahawks are
suddenly 3-3.

Seattle’s defense isn’t nearly as dominating as it was a year
ago, but the biggest problem remains the Hawks’ offensive
line. They allowed three sacks and had three holding
penalties and QB Russell Wilson was running for his life,
especially in the first half when the Seahawks fell behind 21-3 at
one point.

At the start of the season, I thought these Seahawks might be
even better than last year’s Seahawks.

Wrong.

Even after last week’s loss to Dallas, I thought the Hawks
were still the team to beat in the NFC.

Wrong.

Arizona (5-1) might be the best team, even better than Dallas
(5-1) and Philadelphia (6-1) and don’t forget about the Packers
(4-2) or 49ers (3-3). The Seahawks are still in the mix, but
they’ve put themselves in a precarious position. At 3-3, they
don’t have a lot of room for error and the schedule is far
tougher than it was a year ago with road games left against
Carolina (Oct. 26), Kansas City (Nov. 16) and Philadelphia
(Dec. 7) and home-and-home games still to play with the
Cardinals and 49ers.

We were reminded that the previous eight
Super Bowl champions didn’t win a playoff game the following year.
So the Seahawks didn’t have history on their side when the
season started, but to suggest they might not make the
playoffs seemed pretty far-fetched.

Now? Well, maybe not so much.

Pete Carroll, interviewed on 710 ESPN radio Monday morning,
said, “The story is not written right now.”

What about those Huskies?

The Oregon-Washington game was a total mismatch. Oregon’s
45-20 victory, their 11th straight over the Huskies, was far more
convincing than I figured it would be. Washington’s defense, so
impressive the week before while holding Cal to seven points,
couldn’t stop the run or the pass. And Washington’s offense didn’t
look so hot either against an Oregon defense that has
struggled at times.

Quarterback Marcus Mariota played like a Heisman Trophy
winner and the Ducks didn’t look anything like the team that
barely beat Washington State 38-31 and lost to Arizona 31-24.

If Oregon runs the table against Cal, Stanford, Utah, Colorado
and Oregon State, they should wind up in college football’s
four-team national playoff. But in college football’s most
unpredictable season, who can say for sure what’s going to happen
from week to week?

As for Washington, it’s back to the drawing board, as a
disappointed coach Chris Petersen pointed out after the
loss. The Huskies were also beat up physically in
Eugene. QB Cyler Miles left with a possible concussion, and if
he’s not available, it appears redshirt freshman Troy
Williams will be the starter. He won the backup job over Jeff
Lindquist and played most of the fourth quarter after Miles was
injured.

The UW has six games left, including a tough home game
against Arizona State on Oct. 26 (7:45 p.m., ESPN), and I wouldn’t
be surprised if the Huskies went 4-2 or 1-5. At the
start of the season, I predicted Washington would finish 10-3, tied
for second in the Pac-12 North. Now my brain tells me they’re
looking more like an 8-5 team that will find itself playing in the
Cactus Bowl (Jan. 2 at Tempe, Ariz.) or Las Vegas Bowl (Dec.
20).

Some links

The St. Louis Surprise. Mike Silver of NFL.com writes about
Jeff Fisher’s call for a fake punt on fourth down, the play that
sealed the Rams’ upset of the Seahawks on Sunday.

Remember Steve “Bye Bye” Balboni? Well, if you’re old as dirt,
like me, you do. He was the slugging first baseman for the Kansas
City Royals’ 1985 World Series champions. Now? He’s an advance
scout for the San Francisco Giants. It’ll be a strange, trip for
Balboni when he returns to KC this week for the start of the World
Series.

Played in the Keith Carden Memorial Handball Tournament today at
the Bremerton YMCA, so I missed the UW-EWU football game.

Between matches, I followed updates on Twitter and the outcome
didn’t really surprise me that much. I figured Eastern was the most
dangerous of Washington’s first four opponents — Hawaii, Eastern,
Illinois and Georgia State (in that order). The Eagles’
offense might be the best Washington faces all season. And, yes,
I’m including Oregon.

Still, the 59-52 victory raises questions, just as Washington’s
17-16 win over Hawaii did the previous week. For the second week in
a row, we’re left wondering if this team is any good. As I type
this, Oregon State is leading Hawaii 38-14 in the fourth
quarter. (Update: Hawaii came back to make a game out of it, losing
38-30).

The Huskies have got some serious work to do on defense, which
is where they were supposed to be strong. Linebacker Shaq Thompson,
who didn’t make much of an impact in Hawaii, defensive lineman
Danny Shelton and cornerback Marcus Peters were all preseason
Pac-12 first-team selections. Defensive end Hau’li Kikaha joined
that trio on the Bronco Nagurksi Award list, which goes to the
nation’s top defender.

Peters was hit with a 15-yard penalty for taunting that led to
an Eastern Washington touchdown and 45-44 lead for the Eagles in
the second half. UW coach Chris Petersen benched Peters for the
rest of the game.

“That was easy,” Petersen told the media after the
game. “I’m not into stupid penalties. That wasn’t even a
decision (to bench Peters).”

Ten wins (my prediction) doesn’t look good right
now, but college football is a funny, unpredictable animal. By
Week 7, when Washington travels to Eugene to play Oregon, the
Huskies might be a different team. Thompson did have 14
tackles and a sack against Eastern. He also had a 57-yard rushing
TD. Shelton had 12 tackles, including four sacks, and Kikaha had
six tackles and a sack. The secondary remains a work in
progress.

Give Eastern credit, though. Coach Beau Baldwin, the former
Curtis HS/Central Washington QB who seems ready to parlay his
offensive wizardry into a Division I head-coaching job, might be
coaching one of the top quarterbacks in the country in Vernon
Adams, Jr. Adams torched the Huskies for 475 yards
and 7 touchdowns.

Oregon must be licking its chops in anticipating of
their Oct. 18 game against Washington in Eugene.

Hell, Illinois and Georgia State are probably drooling, too.

Illinois sophomore QB Wes Lunt passed for 3 TDs and 456 yards in
a 42-34 win over Western Kentucky on Saturday. He threw 4 TDs
passes in a 28-17 win over Youngstown State the week before.
Georgia State (1-1) lost to New Mexico State 34-31 after slipping
past Abilene Christian 38-37 in a game where QB Nick Arbuckle
passed for 4 TDs and 413 yards.

Sure, Washington put up 59 points and didn’t commit a turnover
against Eastern. But Sam Houston State, which lost 56-0 to LSU
on Saturday, scored 35 points against EWU the week before so
you need to put things in perspective.

The Dawgs might be off to a 2-0 start, but even the
biggest UW fan has to admit that it’s not the kind of start
that gets you dreaming about big things down the road.

ALSO

Olympic High grad Larry Dixon got his senior year at Army off to
a good start, carrying 20 times for a career-high 174 yards and 2
TDs in the Black Knight’s 47-39 win over Buffalo. Army is at
Stanford next Saturday (2 p.m., Pac-12 Network).

Bremerton’s Jim Wainwright and Loren Schaller of Gig
Harbor beat Port Townsend’s Chris Cardinal and Bremerton’s
Jane Erlandsen in the finals of the Carden Memorial Tournament.
Yours truly and Gil Mendoza, the deputy superintendent of schools
in our state, won the consolation bracket after getting out butts
kicked by Wainwright and Schaller in the first round.

A foursome that included Connor Robbins and Scott Sargent
(sorry I missed the other two guys) shot 19-under in a scramble
format at Gold Mountain’s Cascade Course on Friday during the Yacht
Club Broiler’s tournament. The round included three eagles.

“Percy Harvin is so fast it looks like he’s playing in a video
games compared to the other guys on the field.” — Evan Somerheiser
of the Bremerton rock band Power, and a huge Seahawks’ fan

Jason Hammel, a 2000 South Kitsap grad, has
struggle since being traded from the Chicago Cubs to the Oakland
Athletics. Hammel is 1-5 with a 6.75 ERA with Oakland. He gave
up three home runs in three-plus innings in a loss against
Atlanta on Friday. He was 8-5 with a 2.98 ERA with the Cubs.

South Kitsap grad Willie Bloomquist is done for
the year after undergoing micro fracture surgery on his right
knee. The Mariners utility player hit .278 in 47 games, playing
seven different positions.

Drew Vettleson is hitting .230 with seven HRs
and 23 RBI for the Double-A Harrisburg Senators, an affiliate of
the Washington Nationals. Vettleson, 23, an outfielder from Central
Kitsap, has hit two HRs in his last six games but is only hitting
.204 in his last 10 games. The left-handed hitting Vettleson
is hitting .280 vs. lefties and .198 vs. righties. All seven
of his HRs have come against right-handers.

South Kitsap grad Aaron Cunningham, an
outfielder, is hitting .255 with 0 HRs and 31 RBIs for the Reno
Aces, the Triple-A club of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Cunningham,
28, has hit .323 (10-for-31) with 5 RBI in his last 10 games.

Brady Steiger, a first baseman/third baseman,
is hitting .167 for the Staten Island Yankees, a short Class A
club in the New York-Penn League. The former South Kitsap and
Lewis-Clark State star just returned from injury and has played in
just two games since July 21.

SAYING ALL OF
THE RIGHT THINGS:

Rhode Island Little League coach Dave Belisle, following an
elimination loss at the World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania,
puts things in perspective for a bunch of kids. Great
speech.

To the Bellingham Bells, who won the West Coast League
championship on Monday night, winning the deciding game of the
best-of-three series against the Corvallis Knights. Good buddy Jim
Clem is the pitching coach of the Bells and we had the pleasure of
hosting the team twice this summer on trips to Bremerton to play
the Kitsap BlueJackets. Classy bunch.es

NOT SO
CLASSY:

Johnny (Finger) Manziel threw as many obscene gestures as he
did touchdown passes in Monday night’s exhibition game. Not a good
sign for the Browns.

Aug. 28: Washington State Cougars vs. Rutgers, in Seattle
(CenturyLink), 7 p.m., FOX Sports. Thursday game is
intriguing. Cougs looking to get off to a good start
against Scarlet Knights, now a member of the Big Ten.

UPDATE: Washington 18, San Jose State 1 (5 innings). It was even
more lopsided than the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory.

It’s already in the mid-80s and we’re going to take advantage of
the sunshine today by taking in a Husky softball game. The
Washington Huskies (6-0) are playing San Jose State (6-0) in a
tournament game in Tempe this afternoon.

Washington’s an easy team to pull for. I’m helping out at
Olympic College as a volunteer assistant and head coach Dan Haas,
assistant Heather Jenkins and myself took in a practice last month
in Seattle.UW coach Heather Tarr couldn’t have been more gracious.
She wandered up in the stands to welcome us and explain what the
Huskies were trying to accomplish that day and answered all of our
questions. She later showed off the UW’s locker room and coaches’
offices below the stadium.

Being an old men’s fastpitch
player, it was interesting to see how the Huskies practiced.
It’s easy to see why the Dawgs have enjoyed so much success under
Tarr and her staff, which includes husband J.T. D’Amico, Lance
Glasoe and Brad Ditter, the former head baseball coach at Edmonds
CC. There’s a purpose to everything they do.

Washington was 45-17 and finished third at the Women’s World
Series a year ago, and they return all but one starter.

I’m excited about Olympic College softball, too. Danny Haas is
doing a solid job recruiting and we’ve got some talented ladies.
Our season starts March 1-2 at an NWAACC tournament in Richland.
Stop by and catch one of our home games when we get going. I think
you’ll be impressed by the level of play.

More NFL predictions: If I was betting a
three-team parlay this weekend in Vegas, I’d take the Chargers,
Eagles and 49ers. If you wanted to make it a four-team parlay,
throw in the Chiefs.

If I’m right, that also means that the Seahawks will face the
49ers on Saturday, Jan. 11, at CenturyLink. Seattle gets the lowest
remaining seed and it’ll be the Packers (No. 4), 49ers (No. 5) or
Saints (No. 6). A Niners-Seahawks rematch for the right to move on
to the NFC Championship game could be better than the Super Bowl.
These guys don’t like each other, and there’s a lot of similarities
between the two NFC West rivals.

UPDATE: Of course, I meant to say I’d take the
Chargers, Saints and 49ers for that three-team parley. And the
Colts, not Chiefs, for the 4-teamer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Seahawks favored by 8 points to
beat the Saints. It was 5 1/2 the last time when Seattle won
34-7.

Some thoughts

Bainbridge’s Scott Orness
keeps showing why he’s one of the best high school basketball
coaches in the state.
His Spartans,with just one
senior, rebounded from a 16-1 deficit to give unbeaten and
nationally-ranked Rainier Beach a pretty good battle on
Friday.

I was surprised former Husky great Marques Tuiasosopo left
Washington to become the tight ends coach at USC. He was offered
the same position by new Husky coach Chris Petersen. It was later
reported that Steve Sarkisian also gave Tuiasosopo the title of
assistant head coach. Maybe there’s enough additional
responsibility there to make it a no-brainer for Tui, but I
think his decision caught a lot of Washington Husky fans off-guard.
Getting Tui was a big get for Sark, and a loss for Petersen, who
brought six assistants with him from Boise State and two more
former Boise coaches who were at Florida.

The Kitsap Admirals are hosting the ABA All-Star game on Sunday
(Jan. 5) at 3 p.m. at Olympic College. There will be a dunk contest
and more. Could be a fun afternoon. Wonder if Dr. J, George
Gervin, David Thompson, and Artis Gilmore will show up?

I think the Seattle Mariners should sign Brady Sizemore to a
minor-league contract. The Everett native has been out of baseball
since 2011 because of a long list of injuries. But he’s only 31. He
was arguably one of the top two or three center fielders in
baseball from 2005-08, hitting .281 with 107 home runs and 115
stolen bases. Why not bring him in and let him compete against
Michael Saunders, Dustin Ackley, Abraham Almonte and oft-injured
Franklin Gutierrez? Corey Hart and Logan Morrison are listed
as infielders on the 40-man roster, and will likely play some OF,
1B and DH.

Coolest story of the week: Lincoln High football coach and
match teacher Jon Kitna, 41, signing with the Dallas Cowboys to be
a backup quarterback. Wait, it gets better. It’s been reported that
the Tacoma native is donating the $53,000 he earns this week to
Lincoln High, his old school. His generosity probably doesn’t
surprise those who know him. Kitna’s goal when he accepted the
football job at Lincoln was to build “R.E.A.L. Men” who (R)eject
passivity, (E)mpathize with others, (A)ccept responsibility and
(L)ead courageously.

The case for and against Edgar Martinez when it comes to
deciding if he’s a Hall of Famer or not. Since the DH has been part
of the game for 30 years, it seems silly to me for voters to punish
a player because he was a DH. And you can make a pretty good
argument that Edgar’s the best DH in the history of the sport. What
do you think?

Scott Weber of Looking Landing has some good thoughts on
Masahiro Tanaka and why the Mariners would be better off spending
big bucks to land the Japanese pitcher than on an outfielder like
Nelson Cruz. You have to admit, a starting rotation of Felix
Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Tanaka, Taijuan Walker and Erasmo
Ramirez or James Paxton looks pretty good on paper.

Recommended reading: Michael Bramberger of Sports
Illustrated wrote a pretty thought-provoking
column about Tiger Woods in November. It all revovled around
former Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee writing a piece where
he questioned Tiger for being “a little cavalier with the
rules.”

Bremerton High has cracked the
Seattle Times’ Class 2A boys basketball top-10 rankings. The
Knights (6-0) are No. 9 this week. I watched the Knights beat Port
Angeles before Christmas (look for my story on senior Deonti Dixon
on Friday) and this could be a special season if they keep
improving. Fundamentally, they’ve got a ways to go on defense, but
their quickness makes up for a lot of that. Keep your eye on
these guys. The Associated Press state rankings should be out after
the first of the year.

Are you having a tough time getting excited about the Washington
Huskies and the Fight Hunger Bowl? Me too. With the coaching
change and the Tosh Lupoi situation and the UW losing out on prize
recruit Budda Baker, the bowl game itself seems pretty meaningless.
It’ll be interesting to see how
Marques Tuiasosopo does as an interim head coach — you can’t
help but pull for that guy — and the possibility of a nine-win
season, I guess, is a big deal. But the opponent, BYU, doesn’t do
it for me. The UW and Cougars, now an independent, have never
met in a bowl game, but they’ve played eight times, six since 1996
(the series is tied 4-4) with BYU winning the last three, including
a 23-17 victory the last time the met in 2010.

Tosh Lupoi, the Washington Husky footbal assistant accused of
violating NCAA rules, will stay on the UW staff for now.

Remember the Seahawks 58-0 blowout over the Cardinals on Dec. 9
of last year? Arizona returns to CenturyLink on Sunday with a
chance to avenge that embarrassment as well as end Seattle’s
14-game home winning streak. This could be the Hawks toughest test
at the Clink in a while. The Cardinals (9-5) are on a pretty good
roll and playing much better than they did earlier this year with
Seattle won 34-22 in Arizona.
Coach Bruce Arians has created a new era in Arizona.

Byron Maxwell, who has three interceptions in his last two
games, is just trying to take advantage of his opportunities.
Seahawks secondary coach Kris Richard said this to Clare Farnsworth
of Seahawks.com: “I’m going to tell you something about
Byron, he’s very humble, he’s diligent and I don’t think what’s
happening to him could happen to a better person. He’s fantastic to
be around, and he has been for years. So he’s kind just been
sitting back in the wings and waiting for his turn. And here it
is.”

“I think the No. 1 thing is, first of all, talking it –
talking and believing it,” Wilson said. “When I say ‘ignore the
noise,’ I really try to just block it all out. I believe in what I
say, in terms of just trying to stay focused on the moment, trying
to stay focused on the now.

In
Joe Posnanski’s mind, before Jackie Robinson, graceful first
baseman Buck Leonard was the right man to break the color line in
baseball.

Posnanski compared Leonard to Lou Gehrig:

… They shared a certain aura as well as a style of play.
Leonard readily admits he tried to copy Gehrig’s style when he
became a professional — who better to copy? Gehrig hit with more
power, surely, and Leonard was reportedly slicker defensively, but
their similarities ran much deeper than their playing styles. They
were both steady men without flash, without noticeable egos, with a
driving consistency and certain quiet resolve that people around
them could not help but admire. Everyone thought the world of Buck
Leonard.

Michael Thomas’ story might be the best of the NFL season. A
practice squad player with the 49ers, he was sleeping in late after
the Niners beat the Seahawks a couple weeks ago and almost slept
through a chance to become an active player with the Miami
Dolphins. He woke up in time, signed a contract, flew to Miami and
ended up making the game-saving interception in the end zone
against the Patriots.

The Los Angeles Times reported that University of Washington
assistant Tosh Lupoi is under investigation for possible violations
regarding payment for online classes and tutoring for an incoming
recruit. It might explain why Lupoi didn’t follow Steve Sarkisian
to USC. Lupoi denies any wrongdoing and remains part of
Washington’s staff as the Huskies prepare for the Dec. 27 Fight
Hunger Bowl.

From the Times:

The allegations surround the recruitment of Andrew Basham, a
former defensive lineman at Lynnwood High in Washington, who signed
a letter of intent with the Huskies last February but did not
qualify academically to enroll.

Mike Davis, a throwing coach who helped Basham win a state
shotput title, told The Times that Tosh Lupoi, Washington’s
defensive line coach, gave him $3,000 to cover private tutoring for
Basham through a test preparation company. Davis said he also
received $1,500 from Lupoi to reimburse Basham’s father for online
classes Andrew could use to raise his grade-point average.

Also

New UW coach Chris Petersen announced that he would not travel
with the team for the Fight Hunger Bowl. Marques Tuiasosopo was
named the interim head coach when Sarkisian left for USC and he
will remain in charge of the team. … Coachingsearch.com reported
that Petersen has hired Brent Pease, his former offensive
coordinator at Boise State, to be the Huskies’ OC. Pease was fired
at Florida after two seasons with the Gators. He coached from
2006-2011 at Boise State, working with receivers the first five
years.